Now that Congressional leaders and the White House are pushing for a final vote on health care reform, Congressman Bart Stupak and his allies - including the National Conference of Catholic Bishops - are threatening to bring down the entire bill unless it eliminates private health insurance coverage for abortion.

Let me get this straight......we're trying to pass a health care plan writtenby a committee whose chairman says he doesn't understand it, passedby a Congress that hasn't read it but exemptsthemselves from it, to be signedby apresident who hasn't read it but is exemptfrom it, with fundingadministered by a treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, all to be overseenby a surgeon general who is obese, andfinancedby a country that's broke.

Congressman Bart Stupak, the leading pro-life Democrat working to stop the pro-abortion Senate health care bill in the House if abortion funding is not banned, says he still doesn't think House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has enough votes to push the measure through the chamber.

His comments come after the House Budget Committee rejected an attempt to add his amendment to the reconciliation bill.

In an interview with Fox News' Greta Van Susteren, Stupak said he and his pro-life Democratic colleagues have not backed down from their position that they will vote against the pro-abortion health care bill unless abortion funding and promotion is removed.

"We're still not planning on voting for health care unless we can address some concerns. As I said before, there's many concerns with this bill, especially with the House -- with our vote, we sort of pass the Senate bill without any amendments," he said.

U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, contradicting both the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and members of Congress, said Monday that the Senate health-care bill uses no federal money to pay for health care plans which cover elective abortions.

“There is no federal funding for abortion in either the House or the Senate bill,” Sebelius told CNSNews.com during a telephone news conference on Monday on health information technology.

“Go to the Congressional Research Service, which is the objective research body, for their detailed analysis of how both is handled,” she added.

Reacting to the Catholic Health Association’s endorsement of Senate health reform legislation, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, reiterated in a March 15 statement that the US bishops oppose the legislation under consideration because of its provision for abortion funding and its lack of provision for conscience protection. “The flaws are so fundamental,” he said, “that they vitiate the good that the bill intends to promote.”

“Throughout the discussion on health care over the last year, the bishops have advocated a bipartisan approach to solving our national health care needs,” Cardinal George said. “They have urged that all who are sick, injured or in need receive necessary and appropriate medical assistance, and that no one be deliberately killed through an expansion of federal funding of abortion itself or of insurance plans that cover abortion. These are the provisions of the long standing Hyde amendment, passed annually in every federal bill appropriating funds for health care.”